Lebensraum for the Aryan People
Adolf Hitler developed the belief that Germany would require Lebensraum (“living space”) as a crucial component in the Nazi’s worldview that fed its military conquests and racial plans. German geographer, Friedrich Ratzel, created the term in 1901. He believed that a country had to be self-supporting when it came to resources and territory to protect itself from outside threats. Hitler had adopted this belief and held the same view that Germans needed to look to Eastern Europe as the source of their Lebensraum. He once spoke of the “incalculable raw materials” in the Urals, the “rich forests” of Siberia, and the “incalculable farmlands” of the Ukraine. Hitler and the Germans viewed the future conquest of the land in east Europe as their “Manifest Destiny”. They compared their pursuit for land in the east to the Americans expansion to the west in the 19th century. Hitler felt that the inferior races occupying Eastern Europe, the Slavs and Jews, would need to be removed by force just like the Native American Indians were by the Americans.
References
- History.com. (2009). Retrieved from http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hitler-announces-an-anschluss-with-austria
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Introduction to the Holocaust.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005143. Accessed on November 17, 2016.
- The Nazi Germany, Retrieved from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/304626362268830570/
Credit: Harold